Signs of Spring

One thing you can say for this area is that there is no shortage of parks and conservation areas, on Sunday we went for a walk in Kerncliff Park.  Check out the size of this tree bole we found, it looks like Rose is sitting on a giant brain.

Not much greenery yet and it's still winter coat weather for those of us with nerve endings but we did find some evidence that the world is waking up.  The first catkins I've seen this year.

And in the wetland area a whole flock of Northern Water Snakes basking in a big tangled heap, too far away from the boardwalk to photograph.  Fortunately this one was hanging out on it's own waiting for a photo opp.

Actually, I've just looked up the collective of snake and you can use: den, bed, nest, knot or pit.  How dull, I thought there would have been something far more interesting than that.

Friday Style Update

Just in time for the weekend here's a round up of some of Rose's outfits this week (it's been a good one) and yes, I'm breaking the rules already, I'll make up for too many pictures with a distinct lack of words.  So, here you go...

A sporty look for the scooter commute to school.

 If you're not feeling sporty you don't have to give up on the glamour.

This season's must have backpack is ideal for a day at the office, dig the knee socks!

 And the rain clearly doesn't put a damper on things either.

A Technological Easter

When I first started blogging I set myself parameters for each post.  I decided that each one should be no more than 200 words long and contain a maximum of 2 pictures, thereby ensuring that they were not too long and boring to read and not too daunting to write.  That's all gone by the wayside hasn't it?  Well, I am reinstating the rules so this is the last long post for a while hopefully.

On Good Friday we tried and failed to go on an Easter Egg Hunt at a nearby conservation area, we were thwarted by queuing on a truly British scale.

So on Saturday, to avoid queues, I organised activities that no other Mum would be mean enough to put their children through on the long weekend.  First off we drove to Stoney Creek and had lunch in The Power House, a bar and restaurant in the building that provided power for the rail lines in the 1890s.  Outside was pretty cool but inside has been restored so it's like being in an old style saloon, my pictures are a bit dark but you get the idea.

No ladies of ill repute on the upper level, should have sent Rose up to do some high kicks but she was wearing a skort

Hope Jacob has not had one too many

Then we went to the Museum of Science and Technology in Hamilton, what a fab place, I'm afraid I was so excited about the amazing, shiny, absolutely humongous working beam engine that I forgot to take photos.  When we got outside I realized my mistake and took one picture from outside, I'm putting it in but it's not the same.

And to celebrate Easter I baked my own hot cross buns, delicious, Delia comes through again.

Ooh La La

I've really had enough of this already, good job I'm not the organised type who puts snow pants, gloves, hats etc away before June.  Perhaps 'cast ne'er a clout til May be out' is wise after all, or at least 'organize ne'er a coat closet til May be out.'

Despite waking up to an inch of snow this morning it has actually been very warm for the past couple of days.  On Sunday it was 22 degrees so we went on an adventure to small town Ontario and checked out Paris.  This is the main street.

I've never been to the capitol of France but I suspect that all resemblance between it and this one ends with the name.  I liked this though.

Actually, the downtown area was pretty old by Canadian standards and had a nice bohemian feel to it.  We had an excellent coffee in The Brown Dog, although I wouldn't advise sitting outside it or any other of the eateries after looking at their balconies from this angle.

And to finish off an interesting historic fact for you.  Alexander Graham Bell received the first ever long distance telephone call in this Paris in 1876.  Sunshine, coffee and a little bit of history, what more could you wish for.

Thoughts on Skorts

'Skorts' are a relatively new one on me, for the uninitiated a 'skort' is a skirt with built in shorts underneath.  The first time I saw one was in the women's wear section and I have to say that I was completely dumbfounded, if you're going to do something you can't do decently in a skirt then surely you should just wear something else. Perhaps you could maximize your rubbish word amalgamations by eating with a 'spork' while wearing a 'skort' and if you really want to wind me up you could do it while riding some sort of 'transportation'.

Sorry, back to skorts, for Rose they provide the perfect compromise between the very pretty, floaty, girly (and alarmingly garish) numbers that she prefers and the all over camo-gear with flak jacket, knee pads and protective head wear that would be more appropriate to the way she plays.  A skort may not provide much padding but at least there's less underwear on show.

Anyway, this is really a craft blog.  Last December Rose refused to walk past this rather fetching knit fabric in Fabric Land (and who could blame her, especially at $3.50/m) and yesterday I found the perfect undershorts in a thrift store (just $1.50!).  Put them together and we have a ravishing and pant-covering summer skort AND there's enough fabric left over for a dress.  Result.

Milton and Beyond

I am very confused about what is happening to time, I never seem to have enough to blog or actually do anything worth blogging about.  I thought about putting it down to having Rose back at home 2/3 days (neither of us is very happy about that one) but that didn't stop me all of last year.  I think I may just have lost my blogging mojo for the time being.

Anyway, none of us have had much energy after the prolonged stomach flu bout last week so we weren't up to much at the weekend but the sun was out, temperatures were at 10 degrees above (!!!) and I wanted to get out of the city for a few hours so we checked out Milton.  I'm not sure why but at the moment checking somewhere out invariably starts with the nearest all day breakfast place.  If you're ever in Milton there is a brilliant diner called Troys.  There is also a town hall disguised as a castle with a convenient playground in front.

As we were just underneath it we went up onto the escarpment for a walk.  The Niagara Escarpment is a big geological formation that starts in Watertown, New York and ends north west of Chicago in Illinois somewhere, shaping the great lakes basin and providing some little cliffs for The Niagara river to fall over on the way (Thanks Wikipedia), around here it provides good views out to Lake Ontario and Toronto.  You could see the Toronto skyline looking this way but my magic camera has disappeared it and inserted the back of someone's head.

Look, no snow!

We went for a nice walk through the woods, the car park was absolutely chokka but there was no one on the foot paths and plenty of sticks, even a couple of new staffs for Gandalf the Pink and her mate Saurob.

Also there was a massive fort, who makes these things?  Surely it can't be kids, mine get bored after they've balanced 2 sticks together.

So that was our weekend, hope you had a good one.

Another Family WIP

The last few days have been a complete wash out as the entire family has gone down with some sort of sick/flu bug variant.  First Rose on Saturday, then Jacob and I on Monday and this time Tom has not escaped and he went down with it last night, the only even vaguely good thing is that I am pretty much recovered so Tom and I didn't get it simultaneously.

So instead of blogging a lovely post of sick details I have put together some work in progress from the last week or two.

Jacob's class have been working with pretend money as some sort of math/business thing so he has been making lots of things out of paper and selling them at school.  All his products are very fiddly and I seem to have been spending a lot of time helping him cover bits of folded paper with parcel tape and carrying out other similarly 'useful' activities.  He is very pleased that he now has the most money of anyone in the class, although that's only after someone else's got confiscated when they were discovered selling photocopied buy-one-get-one-free pizza vouchers (how enterprising, tee hee).  Here is J with some of his wares.

Rose has been busy fixing bling to fairies.  These are supposed to be stuck onto windows but she said we shouldn't stick them to rented windows in case they didn't come off so we stuck them to an old picture frame with some rather fetching wrapping paper underneath.

I renovated the kitchen table top with chalk paint.  That was really good fun and there may be more posts about chalk paint in the future when I've covered the whole house in it.  The black leaf is the finished one on this picture, note the fantastically antiqued buts around the edge.

And finally, a couple of weeks ago I made a cushion to sent back to the UK for English Mother's Day, it's there now so I'm free to blog it.  I'm pleased with how it came out, the colours are a bit of a departure from anything I've done so far but I was feeling the (desperate) need for something fresh and spring-like.